Bright Ideas

Does Your Business Have an Effective Website?

Large or small, businesses succeed or fail based on customer impressions. Investing time and effort in your website can ensure a pleasant, profitable digital experience. That's pleasant for your customer; profitable for you! In this blog post you'll find some key things to keep in mind as you build and manage your website.

Keys to a Pleasant Customer Experience

Though the following items seem common sense, they bear repeating. We've all clicked a link and found ourselves on a website that just looks off. Luckily, there are a few simple considerations that will keep your site looking good and keep potential customers happily viewing.

1) Theme: The overall look of your site should convey something about the product or service you offer. It should help set the tone of the conversation you want to have with your customer through your site. Each page should look clean and professional, and the design should communicate something about what you offer. An example: A massage therapist wants to put forward a relaxing, calming tone. His site should avoid bright colors, metallic tones, hard edges. Think organic textures, muted and soft colors, gentle curves. Make sense? Think about what you want to communicate and use your site design to do it.

2) Consistency: When you've chosen a look or theme, stick to it. You may want to make a flashy specials page. Resist that urge unless you have a good reason not to. Maintaining a consistent style and tone makes the customer experience feel streamlined. It also makes you look professional, consistent, and reliable. Hitting a page that looks different from the others disrupts the message your site is trying send. Set the tone of your conversation with your customer and stay on topic.

3) Mobile-Friendly:More and more browsing is happening on mobile devices. Is your site responsive? Does it have a mobile version? Failing to provide a pleasant experience for mobile visitors means lost visitors. Visitors that could have become your customers. In addition to lost market share, Google is also using mobile-friendliness in their ranking. Failing to provide a mobile-friendly experience can cause you to rank lower in searches.

Keys to a Profitable Experience

Your website needs to be more than a digital business card, or glorified phone book listing. It needs to be capable of turning a visitor into a customer or a lead. Your website is a tool for generating business, but only if you make it one. Below find some key elements to consider that can help your website drive more business.

1) The Right Content:Find the balance between too much and not enough information. You don't want to overload, and you don't want to leave people guessing. Put yourself in a customer's shoes, what would they want to know? Make sure that information is easy to find and easy to digest. Don't waste time telling a customer about something unimportant or better left to face-to-face interaction. Less is sometimes more.

2) Calls to Action: Figure out what meaningful interactions a customer can take, and give them a place to do it on your site. Most importantly, tell them to do it. Don't rely on your customer to remember you later and call you. Do you have a newsletter? Ask for sign-ups. Do you give free estimates? Have a request form. Take appointments? Let people book online. Have free samples? Have a request form. Hosting an event? Ask for sign-ups. You should be getting the idea. Make your calls to action compelling -

"Sign up for exclusive savings"

"Why wait? Book Online Now!"

"Get your free estimate today!"

"RSVP Now and get a free widget!".

Be creative and incentivize the actions you want people to take. The results will surprise you.

3) Look Legitimate: The Digital World isn't always safe. Avoid anything that calls your sites safety and legitimacy into question. Make sure your design is clean and consistent across all your pages. Make sure your site is free from spelling or grammatical errors. Include links to other places you're online (think social media accounts). These things all work together to show visitors that your site is legitimate and trustworthy.

Make sure your website is doing the most it can for your business

Your website should be more than a digital business card. It should communicate via text and design what your business is all about. More importantly it shouldn’t just tell a customer about you, it should actively grow your business. Keep these key elements in mind and see if your site is the most effective website for your business.